On 01/09/10 20:40, Stephen Sinclair wrote: > Hello, > > This is a general question about linking to proprietary libraries. > Specifically I am thinking about developing a library which will work > normally in the general case, but in some cases the user might have a > proprietary library installed on their system, in which case I'd like > to dynamically load that library and call out to its functions. > > The proprietary library in this case would be for doing I/O with a > particular hardware device, for which there is currently no open > source alternative. Therefore the user owning such a device would > have installed the software and expect my library to work with it. > Conversely, he would not have the proprietary library unless he has > the device in question.. so I sort of think of this library as being > "part of" the device. I don't have the ability to reverse engineer it > and write my own drivers, but I'd still like users of this device to > be able to make use of my software. > > Would such a library have difficulty getting accepted by Debian? > > Are there other examples of libraries in Debian which optionally > leverage proprietary code if it is available? > Not exactly a library, but the kernel will load proprietary firmware if it finds it available and the device in question exists. As long as your software is useful without said proprietary library, it can go in main. If not, it should go in contrib. -- Saludos, Felipe Sateler
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